Mac for Gaming: Best one?

OK I am from England, and have decided to buy a Mac, for the first time.

PC's just lock up and are generally irritating to use. I work at an electrical store that sells Macs, and spending a lot of my time (ignoring customers no less) playing about with them, checking prices, finding out I can use my girlfriends uni discount, has spurred me on to buy one.

But, the niggling thing that is there is this: which is better for gaming, the 24inch iMac with the HD4850 upgrade (with 3.06 GHz processor), OR the 17inch MacBook Pro with 9400M + 9600GT graphics, with 3.06 GHz processor.

As far as price is concerned of course I want to spend as little as possible, but as much as to not compromise. So, is the MacBook Pro better than the iMac?
The MacBook Pro comes in at over £2200 before uni discount, and the iMac at £1839 before discount. Is the extra cost for the MacBook Pro just simply a case of portability? That's not something I care about, only gaming performace.

Long winded yes, but I have to be sure I'm spending nearly £2000 of my hard earned cash on the RIGHT purchase, so any advice from anyone is greatly appreciated

I'd go with the iMac, I own the previous iMac series (last years model) it's the one with the HD2600 it does great, so with the higher end it will even do better so you know where my vote goes.

Edit: Also I would pick up a better mouse than the mighty mouse, which in my opinion is garbage, I'd suggest towards a logitech MX620 or higher.

I don't do any gaming on my Macbook Pro but I do love being able to carry it around with me when need be, If you think that for any reason you may want to game while traveling or new portability for work now or in the future you may want to go with the Macbook Pro. I think that you have made an excellent choice switching to OSX rather then windows and I'm sure you will have a much better gaming experience. So yeah Macbook Pro if you might go portable, and on the other hand go with the iMac if its going to sit in one place at home. Hope I helped in some way. Eric

If all you care about is gaming power, and not portability, go with the imac. As of now (I'm still not sure how this will work in snow leopard) you can't use the 9400M + 9600GT graphics cards at the same time, it's one or the other, and the HD4850 is in a class above the 9600GT which is, when it comes down to it, a mobile video card

Bottom line, dollar for dollar (or I guess pound for pound in your case) desktops almost always beat notebooks in terms of power. This is because in notebooks you pay a big premium for portability, plus there is less space to work with and things need to stay cool (also battery life is a concern so power draw needs to be kept low).

In short, my opinion is, for power go with the imac. It will be the more powerful of the two, plus you'll get a much bigger screen. Remember, this is all assuming that you don't care about portability at all.

Nah portability is more of a gimmick for my needs. It would be nice, but for the increase in cost for something that's of little real relevance, isn't worth it for me.

Thank you so much for your advice, I've placed the order for the 24inch iMac with 3.06 GHz processor, HD4850, 1TB hardrive space, and to go with my iPhone (The new OS 3.0 'Find My iPhone' was the deal clincher for this): Mobile Me.

Thank you !

Future Mac 88 said:

Nah portability is more of a gimmick for my needs. It would be nice, but for the increase in cost for something that's of little real relevance, isn't worth it for me.

Thank you so much for your advice, I've placed the order for the 24inch iMac with 3.06 GHz processor, HD4850, 1TB hardrive space, and to go with my iPhone (The new OS 3.0 'Find My iPhone' was the deal clincher for this): Mobile Me.

Thank you !

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jeez all i have is 120gb, what has this world come to

Haha I barely use my 750gb with a tri boot system.

Edit: congrats on your purchase, hope you enjoy it and as I said before you might be on the market for a different mouse. As many of us here agree that the mighty mouse is well not so good.

Sorry to ressurect this dead thread but I am excited to say, as of this morning, my iMac is 'Out For Delivery' according to Apple and UPS the carrier. Will be here today sometime!

Thanks for your advice, which was invaluable in helping me make the right decision, and not be terrified spending nearly £2000 on a product I knew very little about in retrospective!